Day 59: Thursday, 7 July 1983

Start: Campground, Boiry-Notre-Dame, France

End: Campground, Occoches, France

Not sure why, but up at 6:30 AM. Campground pretty empty. Kind of misty. This place looks amazingly like a cemetery.

Before I reach Arras I hear a sudden thump, thump, thump from behind. The rear tire -- new in Amsterdam -- has split its casing, and the tube is poking out the sidewall like a rubber hernia. Great. I boot and tape things up as best I can and pedal slowly and carefully into town. In the middle of the ville -- I kid you not -- they've just unloaded mental patients from two big buses. No joke. I guess this is a field trip or something. What's that old French movie about the asylum patients who take over the town? King of Hearts? Here they are, shuffling awkwardly around the streets. Judging by the way they look, maybe they came from Sedan.

I track down a nice bike shop with good gear and buy a pair of sturdy Michelin tires for US$6 a pop. I sit outside the shop and mount the tires. They're a little wider than my old Specialized tires, but ample clearance and clearly superior to the crappy Dutch rubber. Should be good for loaded touring. I inflate them to the recommended 90 psi and add about 5 more psi to make 'em roll a little better, despite the risk of another blowout. Not sure the Michelin Man will dig that.

After a ninety minute delay, I head north toward Bethune, but the route is packed with trucks so I turn off the road to visit the Canadian WWI memorial near Vimy. Trench lines carefully preserved and all very evocative. [2010 Note: More military minutiae omitted.]

After visiting the battlefield, I decide I don't like the road I was on. While trying to plot another route, I choose to change course a little bit and head toward Doullens. Found a good campground, but the office was closed and no one around. Hung out awhile, looked at tent sites, took advantage of their facilities, then rolled into the nearby village, thinking I would return to the campground when it opened. The village was a total loss, no food shops, so I pushed onward to Doullens. Everything there was open and easy to find, so I greedily bought chicken, cheese, bread, wine, breakfast, lunch, and chocolate, lashed everything on board, and kept rolling.

Found this very nice campground just about five kilometers beyond Doullens toward Abbeville. It actually has hot water showers -- eau chaude! -- something I've learned not to expect in France. Right after I got out of the shower, it started to rain. I erected the tent in a frenzy -- should have done that before the shower -- and hopped in with all the food and gear, leaving Bob out in the weather, as usual. Ate a delicious dinner zipped up tight in the June Bug with half my bottle of wine. Then reading and studying maps.

Rain stopped after about two hours, so I removed the fly, strung a line, and hung up most of my clothes to air out.

Nice camp, but all families teeming with young kids. No bicycles. I must be on the wrong roads and staying in the wrong places.

But it was a good day, and I still have some chocolate around here somewhere.

Conditions 

Distance: 75 km 

Weather: Warm, then rain, then clearing 

Road: Good 

Traffic: Busy, but turned off and it thinned out 

Terrain: Relatively flat 

Mechanical: Blow-out, but baby got new shoes from Michelin 

Physical: Feeling very strong